


Freaky Thursday

by nikomiel



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Bodyswap, Friendship, kagehina if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 10:28:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3131210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikomiel/pseuds/nikomiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>tune in for a very special episode of Volleydorks, in which Hinata and Kageyama walk a mile in each other's shoes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freaky Thursday

“So I was watching Brother Bear,” Hinata was babbling as they walked to the bike shed from practice one Thursday, “and how the spirits all _whooshed_ that angsty guy up into the air, and he totally became a bear and rode on mammoths and stopped being grumpy, and I was thinking someone should turn _you_ into a bear and maybe you’ll learn how to smile.”  
Kageyama bristled.  
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Sugawaru said, mildly, as Tanaka laughed beside him.  
“Yeah, dumbass,” Kageyama hissed, flicking at the ginger-haired boy’s ears. “Bears don’t smile.”  
“Um, that’s not quite what I me-“  
“Bears do so smile!” Hinata cut in, crossly rubbing his ears. “And it doesn’t have to be a bear. Just anyone, so you can learn what it’s like to be a commoner and not a ki- OUCH!”  
Daichi grabbed Kageyama’s fist as he raised it to pummel Hinata again. “Stop it, you two!”  
“Well maybe you should get switched with someone too, so you’d finally know what it’s like to have a brain!” Kageyama snapped, his compulsive desire to get the last word in overriding his fear of their captain.  
Daichi looked helplessly at Suga, squinting as they passed the glaring amber of a streetlight. “Can’t you talk to them?”  
Suga put a hand on Hinata’s shoulder and another on Kageyama’s. His face suddenly seemed a lot scarier than the captain’s, and they both swallowed.  
“It seems to me like you both could benefit from walking a mile in each other’s shoes.”  
They looked at each other.  
“As if I would touch his smelly old shoes,” Hinata muttered. Thankfully he was saved further brain damage by the appearance of Noya, or more importantly, the hot buns he was clutching triumphantly in one hand.  
“Yo! Let’s eat!”

Amid a tide of endless bickering, Suga sighed, and thought about how nice it would be if they could, just for once, try to understand each other.

x

A furious buzzing awakened the boy in the too-small bed. Yawning, he slapped at his face as he tried to compute what had rudely jerked him out of his dream about winning Inter-High and rubbing it in the faces of all of Karasuno’s rivals (mostly Oikawa). He cracked open one hazelnut eye, irritably.  
 _What???_  
The buzzing was being emitted by a small, wind up alarm clock with a picture of a penguin on the face. A small, wind up alarm clock that Kageyama could not ever remember owning.  
 _The hell..?_  
Groggily, he slapped the offending clock, and it tumbled to the floor. The buzzing stopped.  
 _Guess that’s one way to turn it off._  
Sighing, he sat up, and jumped as more ringing sounds filled the tiny bedroom.  
Confusion and irritation vied for first place as he staggered out of bed and fought the enormous head rush that threatened to sweep him over, starry-visioned and trembling.  
Behind him, the door flew open to reveal a tiny redhead.

She opened her mouth, letting loose one of the cutest yawns Kageyama had ever witnessed (although he wasn’t about to say so), and cracked a sleepy smile.  
“I knew hiding all those extra alarm clocks would get you out of bed, Nii-chan.”  
 _Oh._  
 _No._  
Double-taking, and then _triple_ -taking, he stared at Natsu and then at the décor around him. Penguin clock that he didn’t own. Too-small bed, with a mustard-coloured duvet. Childish posters covering every inch of his bedroom walls.  
Except, he was now convinced that it was not his.  
This was confirmed when he looked down, and the ground seemed a lot closer than it was before.

Panicking, he fled past Natsu, down an unfamiliar hallway and into the first room he found, which happened to be the bathroom.  
The sight in the mirror smacked him in the face. He gasped.

“Oh shit!!!”

“SHOUYOU! LANGUAGE!”

 

x

 

Hinata moaned as his phone buzzed next to him.  
Without opening his eyes, he stabbed at the buttons. “Hello?”  
“DUMBASS!”  
He held the phone away from his ear, wincing. “What do you want, bakayama? It’s the middle of the night!”  
Yawning, he switched the phone to loudspeaker and rolled over, hugging his knees to his chest.  
“It’s eight o’ clock.”  
Hinata’s eyes opened, gingerly. So it was.  
Which meant…  
“Shit!” He sat up, grabbing his phone on the way. “I’m late I’m late I’m late KAGEYAMA YOU BETTER NOT TRY TO RACE ME THIS M-“  
“Oh, don’t worry.”  
Hinata paused. The voice sounded uncharacteristically grim. “What do you mean?”  
“Weeeell, I think you live a bit closer to school now.”  
“Hah??”  
He got out of bed, and instantly staggered as a wave of spots hit his eyes and dizziness rushed over him.  
“Gah, what the-“.  
He blinked them away, and came face to face with a large mirror opposite the bed. He swallowed.  
“Oh. Guess I see what you mean now.”  
In a daze, he hung up the phone, and tiptoed towards the mirror.

The eyes captured there were sharp dashes of cobalt, glaring beneath strong black brows.  
Thin locks of slick black hung forward over a perpetually wrinkled forehead, and a pointed chin jutted out over a slender neck and wiry, muscled shoulders. The body he saw before him was not compact and vibrating with nervous energy; it was slim and sleek and still.

Hinata had never been still in his life, not even sleeping.

 

Dazedly thinking it over, he realised that if he was Kageyama, and Kageyama was him, then that meant….

“Hahahaha! I’m finally taller than you, Bakayama!”

Then the novelty wore off as he saw the uniform folded neatly on top of Kageyama’s desk.

His face drained of colour.

_How the hell am I going to change for school?_

x

Kageyama would have asked why Hinata’s face was so red when he finally arrived at the Karasuno High School gates, except that his own face was crimson.  
It was clear that they were both thinking the same thing.  
“You didn’t…” Kageyama said, awkwardly. “…did you?”  
Hinata swallowed. “Nope, I thought I’d put that off until after practice.”  
Kageyama blanched, brown eyes widening comically. “No! How about no.”  
“You’d rather be sweaty and gross than take a shower? You can close your eyes!”  
“Hinata,” Kageyama said bluntly. “I would rather be eaten alive by slugs than have to see or touch any part of your body that is not generally covered by clothes. The answer is no.”  
Hinata went to argue back, but was cut off by the bell ringing for the start of class.  
They stared at each other as the schoolyard crowds faded into the halls, voices dying off into silence.  
“Well.” Hinata said, looking apprehensive. “I guess we should get to class.”  
He made to walk left, but Kageyama spun him around. “Dumbass! My class is that way.”  
“I can’t pretend to be you!” Hinata was whining, and it was amazing how he managed to still sound like the same annoying dumbass even in Kageyama’s deeper tones. “And you suck at acting. Remember that time you tried to smile?”  
Kageyama scowled. “It’s easy. You just have to shut up, and I just have to be as irritating as humanly possible.”

 

As it turned out, Kageyama was not wrong. Pretending to be the other person was surprisingly easy; considering how terrible they both were at almost all school subjects, nobody even blinked when Hinata answered a literature interpretation question with “I dunno, why don’t you ask the guy who wrote it?”  
In turn, Kageyama found himself more and more unnerved by the amount of people who greeted him constantly, high fiving him or cracking jokes that he didn’t understand.  
He seemed to be a sort of class mascot, the token bouncy midget that cracked dry jokes and snored in class. For the first time, Kageyama understood Hinata’s desire to be taken seriously in volleyball. It seemed like everything about him pointed to the dumber side of average; his stature, his hair, his voice, his personality. Silly old Hinata, ceaselessly talking and getting himself into trouble. Falling asleep in English lessons and catching volleyballs with his face.  
He wasn’t sure he could handle it. In his own life, he wasn’t particularly liked by anyone, but at least he was respected by everyone. Even if the line between respect and fear was sometimes blurred.

 

This was something Hinata was discovering all by himself.

 

Apparently, the ability to smile had not survived the transition into Kageyama’s body. He tried, when Yachi passed him at lunch and waved, but she was so disconcerted that she walked straight into a vending machine.  
He helped her up, apologising, and she attempted a gracious smile. “That’s okay, Ka-Kageyama.” She frowned up at him. “It’s weird to hear you saying that. You sound like Hinata.”  
He froze, and she mistook his panic for anger.  
“No!” She squeaked, terrified. “I didn’t mean it’s weird to hear you apologise, I mean usually you don’t do anything to apologise for, and I’m sorry that I insulted you if I said you’re like Hinata, not that there’s anything wrong with being Hinata, I just know that you-“  
He slapped a hand over her mouth. “Yachi. Calm down.”  
She made a mmph sound and blinked up at him.  
Suddenly, he realised how un-Kageyama it was to have actual human contact (besides punching) with another person. Backing away, he muttered “Sorry” and ran off, straight into himself.

For once, he was not the one who fell over. Kageyama had sprawled, limbs askew, onto the ground, and was now pushing himself up.  
”I forgot I was such a runt,” he muttered. “Jesus, that was like running into a brick wall. How do you not break more of your limbs?”  
Hinata scowled. “At least I don’t weigh like a million tonnes!”  
“And all of it muscle”, Kageyama hissed, “Which you don’t have.”  
“You-“

x

If class was bad, practice was awful. They called each other by their own names three times, and when Hinata attempted to start off their oddball quick strike, he hit Kageyama in the neck. Tsukishima, the bastard, was howling with laughter, but Daichi grabbed their elbows and hustled them to a corner.  
“What the hell has gotten into you two?!”  
“Kageyama-“ Hinata began, before Kageyama thunked him in the back with his fist.  
Daichi looked no less annoyed.  
“You’re not a Pokemon. Stop saying your own name.”  
“Sorry..” Hianta muttered, while Kageyama looked confused by the reference. Then he straightened with a mischevious glint in his eye, which looked entirely out of place on his grouchy features. “I’m just so egotistical… sometimes I feel the need to shout out my own name so nobody forgets I’m he-“  
The real Kageyama made a strangled growling sound, like a tiger chking on a cough drop.  
“Shut up, dumbass! It’s better than being a whiny, hyperactive midget completely lacking in all forms of coordination known to man!”  
“I’m not the dumbass! YOU’RE the one with the single digit test scores, Bakayama!”  
“SHUT UP.”  
Too late, Hinata realised what he said, and turned to their captain.. They could almost see the gears working overtime in his head.  
“Wait…” his jaw dropped a little as he looked between them. “Bakayama? Single digit scores?”  
He looked at Hinata, who was sweating profusely. “You’re not really Kageyama, are you?”  
Kageyama sighed. “No, he’s not. That’s me.”  
There was a stunned silence.  
“You’re joking.”  
“I wish,” Hinata moaned. “I miss being able to smile without making children cry.”  
Kageyama went to grab his head, but Hianta simply reached out and held him at a distance with Kageyama’s long limbs.” Although this is kinda cool,” he added as an afterthought.  
Daichi looked them, mulling it over. Eventually he smiled. “Well, well, well. It’s just like you said, Hinata. You guys can finally walk a mile in each other’s shoes.”  
“That’s right!” Kageyama was aghast. “YOU jinxed us with all your Uncle Bear crap, you little-“  
“It’s BROTHER Bear, and neither of us turned into one, so it wasn’t me!”  
”MOVING ALONG,” Daichi said in a strong tone, and they shut up. “Have you learned anything yet?”  
Hinata looked at Kageyama. Kageyama looked at Hinata.  
“No,” they said simultaneously, and Daichi groaned.

x

As it turned out, the majority of the learning came after practice, when it was time to go home and face the music (or the shower, as the case may be). They eventually agreed, after high-intensity blushing fits, to keep eyes closed and hands above waist level.

Towel around waist, Hinata breathed a sigh as he made it through the shower without traumatising himself. “Jeez, that was close,” he muttered, hunting in Kageyama’s old wooden chest of drawers for clean underwear. “Ugh, what if I accidently touch his-“  
Suddenly, his fingers brushed against something hard and rectangular in the top drawer. Stretching forwards, he pulled it out.  
It was a sketchbook; dark blue and boring like everything else in Kageyama’s room. Mystified, Hinata hoisted up the towel with one hand and shook it open with the other. A few pages fell out.

Swirls of colour caught Hinata’s eye. Glancing down, he saw that the pieces of paper were coloured in peat browns and murky blues. Mahogany twined around azure blue, with blushes of pink and white. Sakura trees, oak trees, fields, mountains- they were all there.

Jaw dropping a little, he cast his eye back to the sketchbook and reflexively let go of his towel in surprise at what he saw there.  
Automatically, he looked down to catch it, and saw-

“God DAMN it!”

x

“You paint.”  
It was less of a question than it was a statement, but it infuriated Kageyama all the same. Eyes narrowing, he sat on the bed, phone in hand.  
“You went through my stuff? You saw my stuff?”  
For some reason Hinata choked at that last sentence. “Um… yes. Yes I did.”  
“Hinata,” Kageyama said, sounding upset and not angry for once. “That is private.”  
“But it’s beautiful! Why would you hide it?!”  
“Because it’s PRIVATE!” Kageyama barked down the phone. “Looking at how I draw and paint things is looking at how I see things.”  
There was a pause. “Is that why you drew me with wings?”

Kageyama’s ears went red and he stared around, mortified. His hands were slick with embarrassed sweat, and he almost dropped the phone as it slid through his fingers like soap. He tried not to think about how the only reason he was this mortified was because Hinata was spot on. He did imagine him with wings, sprouting from his back and hoisting him into the air as he soared up to meet the toss. Everyone said that Hinata was like a bird, but not everyone went home and _painted_ it.

Hinata, oblivious, was continuing. “Why don’t you show your parents?”  
Kageyama snorted. “Like they’d have time.”  
“Oh I think they would-“ Hinata cut himself off. “Hey, where are they, anyway?”

The nervousness evaporated like a puddle in summer. He fiddled with the horrible yellow duvet, looking down.

“Working. Just make yourself dinner and go to sleep like usual.”  
Hinata sounded horrified. “Dinner without them? Should I-“  
“No.”  
“But Kageyama, won’t they-“  
“No. They won’t.”  
The fact that Kageyama didn’t bother to even wait for the end of the sentence said a lot about his family. And it was nothing that Hinata was happy to hear. On the other end of the line, sitting on Kageyama’s bed, he clasped the phone tightly.  
“Hey, Kageyama… do you get lonely?”  
There was no reply except for the dial tone, beeping in his ears.

x

Unlike Hinata, there was nothing that had surprised Kageyama so far. Apparently, the only thing abnormal about Hianta was how supernaturally annoying he could be.  
He had a childish room, tiny bed, and none of his clothes seemed to go with each other. The more he learnt, the less Kageyama wanted to be stuck in this life.  
He missed his organised house. Hinata’s room was a bomb site of clothes, snack wrappers, and papers everywhere. It was like a convenience store had exploded inside.

Still, he’d never had a sibling, and Natsu was pretty cute. She made Kageyama play jump rope with her for a half hour (and she was arguably better than he was). As he was a big, soppy idiot, he couldn’t walk away, because here was a kid that wasn’t terrified of him. Most kids looked at Kageyama like he was going to push them over and steal their candy, which he would never do (everyone knows athletes don’t eat candy). Conversely, Natsu seemed to adore her big brother, and she was constantly giggling and clinging on to him like he was the hero of her world. It made his throat tight.  
Eventually, he got tired of getting his ass kicked by a six-year-old.

Attempting to leave, he found himself cornered by the big, pleading eyes of Hinata Natsu.  
“Please, Nii-chan… I’ll let you win this time.”  
Kageyama felt slightly insulted. “I’m tired. Play with Mum or Dad.”  
Natsu looked at him like he’d suggested she go play on Mars. “Play with _who_?”  
The question hit him like a volleyball to the stomach, and he realised that Hinata never mentioned his father. Absently, he wondered if he lived somewhere else.

This was confirmed when dinner time consisted of three. Natsu was chattering non-stop, Hinata’s mum was alternating between sipping her water and stopping Natsu from choking on her rice, and Kageyama couldn’t stop thinking about it. Was he dead? Did he leave them? Had Hinata ever even known his dad?

He wanted to think that Mr Hinata was on business, or away somewhere, but there were no photos of him on the living room walls. Looking around, he realised the dining table only had three chairs.  
For some reason, this observation made him feel sad to his bones.

Walking into Hinata’s bedroom, a lot of things made sense to him now. The three chairs. Natsu’s clinginess to her mother and brother. Hinata’s desire to make everyone pay attention to him. The torn right side of a family photo on his wall, as if someone had been cut out. Their old, shabby furniture and his mother’s tiredness.

Hinata’s dad didn’t care that his children existed. Hinata had apparently grown up knowing this.

Looking outside, watching Natsu play jump rope with herself, he wanted to cry.

x

 

Kageyama didn’t often sympathise with people, but then again he didn’t often get stuck in their bodies, either.  
It still felt incredibly awkward, walking up to Hinata the next day and handing him an old maths sheet.

“Here,” he muttered. “I was bored yesterday, and you have a lot of scrap paper in your room..”  
Hinata took it, confused. “What, what did you- wait, this is due today!”  
“Hinata, just look.”  
He did. He gasped.  
“Whoa… you drew this?”

It was Natsu, tongue poking out as she filled in a colouring book with fat crayons. Beside her sat her mother, a soft smile gracing her lips. They were outlined in soft grey pencil, every cowlick in Natsu’s hair painstakingly sketched onto the off-white paper.

Hinata was a bit stunned.

“Why would you-“  
“You have an amazing family, just the three of you.”  
Hinata blinked, brown eyes turning wide and glassy. “Wha-“  
“I counted the chairs. But that’s not important. I just… I’m sorry I’m such a jerk to you, sometimes.”

Hinata looked down. After a while, his lip quirked up. “Me too.” he paused, looking back at Kageyama. “But the thing is… I fell asleep on the couch, and when I woke up someone had tucked me in with a blanket and left me a cup of tea. I think that your parents care more than you think.”  
Kageyama’s face hardened. “They care when they have time. When they remember.”  
Still, he held out one hand, stiffly. “Thanks.”  
Hinata grinned, and shook it.

 

The world cracked open and the light rushed in to fill every corner of their vision, blinding them. Hinata tried to gasp, but the air was sucked from his lungs and it was like he was falling from a very great height-  
The light dissipated, and he stumbled.

When he opened his eyes, they were facing each other, and they were back.

x

 

It would be hopeless to try and stop all their bickering in one day. But, Suga reflected as he leaned against the gym wall, at least they seemed to respect each other now. Kageyama was making plans to come and play jump rope with Natsu, and Hinata was going on about some painting he wanted to commission for his grandma’s birthday (“Come on, she loves tulips and you draw so well-“ “Shut up, dumbass!”).

His attention was suddenly distracted by shouting at the other end of the gym.

“Asahi! When will you stop being such a wimp and ask this chick out?”  
The gigantic ace was shamefaced, head in his powerful hands. “I’m sorry!” he moaned. “She just keeps clutching her handbag so tightly when we catch the bus together... I think she thinks I’m a thug or something.”  
Noya laughed himself breathless. “Then tell her about how you can’t fight your way out of a wet paper bag. Besides, at least you don’t get people mistaking you for an elementary school kid!”  
“At least you don’t get old ladies crossing the road in panic when they see you on the street!”

The bickering continued at high volume until Kageyama and Hinata yelled at them to shut up in unison.

On the other side of the gym, Suga smiled mischeviously, and snapped his fingers.

_Time for another experiment._

**Author's Note:**

> *gasp* sugamama is magic??? well, we all knew that.  
> hope yall enjoyed another installment of dialogue-heavy haikyuu fic (dialogue is my favourite thing, okay) from your friendly neighbourhood Nikomiel


End file.
